Trust, once more, is the chicken soup of social life. But like chicken soup, its curative powers have been oversold. Both trust and chicken soup do lots of good things, but they don't cure all of our ills or solve all of the problems we face in daily life. Neither chicken soup nor trust will make us better golfers or bowlers or even make us more likely to join a bowling league. Both chicken soup and trust can make us feel better, and trust trumps chicken soup because it can also make us feel better about others. It can lead us to civic engagement with people who are different from ourselves and it can foster doing good deeds for those who are less fortunate. It can also make us more willing to look for common ground when we disagree with others about how to solve societal problems.

We are often wary of people who think differently from ourselves. And we are likely to think that people who look different from us may hold different values, as well.